Colonial clerks earning below the pauper threshold felt the census as personal humiliation

Evidence

Nor were those most needy necessarily the most offended. More embarrassing to all, and especially to the ruling elite, were the numbers of subaltern civil servants in government offices whose own incomes were lower than the level at which pauperism was said to start. The commissioners lamented this “misunderstanding” and misconstrual of their intention by those questioned, among whom were lowly clerks in those very offices charged to carry out the investigation. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 922

Categorization

• XREF: The investigation’s subjects doubling as its enforcers mirrors the reader’s theme of colonial knowledge-production folding back on its own petty officials.